


Whatever Remains

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Companionable Snark, Established Relationship, M/M, Pillow Talk, Pre-Canon, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-13 21:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19259635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: In which a very sleepy Watson helps Holmes fight off some self-loathing. (feat. cuddles and banter)





	Whatever Remains

_In two minutes, I’m going upstairs to get a good night’s sleep,_ Watson told himself.

He’d been telling himself much the same thing for the better part of an hour. Yet, there he lay, draped across Holmes’s chest, thoughts of their latest bacchanal still drifting through his mind. Watson hated Holmes’s bed. It was too small, the mattress had lumps, and there was a preponderance of pillows. What one man could possibly want with so many pillows, he had no idea, but if he let them be, he would surely have a stiff neck in the morning.

 _Two minutes,_ Watson thought, _then I’m going._

Two minutes became ten, then twenty. After half an hour, Watson resigned himself to a sore neck and settled in amongst the pillows. He was nearly asleep when Holmes suddenly spoke.

“It’s terribly unfair,” declared Holmes as part of some conversation which had, until now, been occurring only in his head.

Such midnight declarations were another reason Watson preferred to sleep on his own. He perked up enough to ask, dutifully, “What’s unfair?” before burying his face back into the side of Holmes’s neck. 

“You’re such a handsome fellow.”

“Psh.”  
  
“You are, don’t deny it! Handsome enough to tempt the gods. You’re Ganymede.”

Watson couldn’t help but grin at that. Sleepily, he brought a hand to Holmes’s cheek—having first stumbled over his lips, nose, eyes and ear—and gave him an affectionate pat.

“Go t’sleep,” he mumbled.  
  
“You could have your choice of London’s most beguiling dandies and most radiant beauties and what have you got? You’ve got me.”

“Mm,” said Watson.

“It’s unfair,” Holmes repeated. Watson wondered if there was a way to induce muteness. “Terribly unfair.”

“How?”

“That you’re so handsome and I’m so...”  
  
“Loud?”

“Hideous.”

With a deep breath, Watson roused himself. Propped on one elbow, and after a few hearty blinks, he met Holmes’s wild eyes with as earnest a visage as he could muster.  
  
“You are not hideous.”  
  
“I am. I am—and I am an unworthy match for you.”

“You suit me just fine.”

“I’m much older than you.”

Watson chuckled, “Frankly, that’s part of the appeal.”

“I am old and ugly.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

Here, Holmes began a laundry list of his most unattractive features. Flaws both real and imagined. His hairline was too high. His nose wasn’t straight. His height was all wrong and his shoulders, too hairy. 

Watson listened, silent and deferential. He felt he had been right all along—Sherlock Holmes was a machine. He had only two modes: On and Off. When he was On, he was consumed by an incurable bravado. And when he was Off, Holmes believed he was the lowest, most undeserving creature imaginable. Whichever way he felt, there was no convincing him otherwise. On and Off, Off and On. The worst of it, as Watson saw it, was that no one, not even Holmes, knew where the switch lay nor how to throw it.

It was all Watson could do to hold him close. To press a kiss to the crooked nose and to the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. To run his tongue along the edge of a scar. To wipe away Holmes’s slander with affection. By the end of it, he had Holmes flat on his back. Watson settled atop Holmes, their bodies flush, took the other man’s face on his hands and said: “I love you—you know that.”

Holmes acquiesced: “Yes.”

“And I find you devilishly attractive—do you believe that?”

“There’s no denying it,” admitted Holmes, for Watson was pressing relatively firm proof of such against Holmes’s thigh.

“Then there you have it,” declared Watson. He leaned in for a kiss, his lips wearing a triumphantly smug smile.

“Yes,” lamented Holmes, “it’s tragic, really.”

Watson hung his head and sighed. “What’s tragic?”

“For you to be so deluded by your love to think I’m devilishly attractive.”

“Impossible is what you are!”

Holmes shrugged. 

“Look,” continued Watson. “My point is, _I_ like you. _I_ find you handsome. And I’ve excellent taste, haven’t I?”

“... So-so.”

“So-so?”

“Questionable.”

“Questionable? How is my taste questionable?”

“That checkered suit comes to mind.”

“That was three years ago and everyone was wearing them!”

“As I recall,” Holmes said, “we couldn’t even give it away.”

“Not after you’d ‘borrowed’ it to muck out after elephants!”

“How else was I supposed to blend in with Zanzini’s carnival? That suit was _made_ for the circus, my dear.”

“What was that case about, anyway? Animal smuggling?” asked Watson, settling back into the cadre of pillows.

“ _Diamond_ smuggling. They merely used the animals as transport. Messy business.”

Watson shook his head in wonder. “You  _are_ impossible,” he declared, as if it was the best thing a man could be.

“Improbable,” Holmes corrected. He was grinning now, a mischievous, satyr’s grin. On again, then. “Goodnight, my _dear_ fellow.”

“Goodnight, _old man_.”

Beneath the covers, Holmes gave him a good pinch. They chuckled, the two of them, and shifted about to make themselves comfortable. Watson managed to eject a good number of pillows from the bed in the process. There were still too many for his liking, but the mattress, he supposed, was not so bad, after all.


End file.
